Faith and Values: Facts may live alone, but truth-pieces live in stories

I found a truth-piece at 240 degrees south-southwest. A simple three-photo experiment showed me the way.

I took a 240-degree south-southwest photo on floors 1, 4 and 7 of our apartment building. The directional facts were basically the same. But the truth-pieces of what I saw expanded as I went higher to each floor.

Facts rarely tell the fuller truth of a situation. Basically, facts may contribute to “truth,” but truth is much more than facts alone. Truth is never fully known, because it lives inclusively in the unending, complex stories of our daily experiences.

For instance, this week, Bryan Kohberger was sentenced to life in prison for the 2022 murders of four University of Idaho in Moscow. Many facts led to his sentence. But the fuller truth of this horrible event and its impact lives far beyond the facts.

Truth also lives in ancient Roman, Greek or Native American myths that contain no facts but wonderful poetic metaphors. Events or histories long forgotten never factual, but were poetically and morally true. (Thanks to Mark Griswold’s reminder in his July 2025 Spokane FāVS commentary, “Hope, history and the American myth we still believe in.”)

Here’s an unfortunate pushback truth: We live in a dangerous culture of human disinformation and AI bot-generated lying. But even when facts are true, they may expose a dark truth that marginalizes people, denies their humanity or imprisons them in the false reality they are powerless to fight an authoritarian government.

What kind of truth do you find in your own story? What values persuade your truths? How do facts persuade your truths? Facts may contribute to, but don’t define, “truth.” That’s why I prefer to speak of “truth-pieces.”

Every day, we live with destructive and healthy truth-pieces. The range of truth-pieces might be described as low-value/high-value, healing/hurtful, me-value/we-value, banned/unbanned truth, caustic/toxic, graceless/graceful.

“Caustic” is from Latin and Greek words related to burning or corroding substance. Latin and Greek roots for “toxic” related to poison/poisoning. Ugh-Ugh! Truth-pieces can be like that.

But truth-pieces can also be prompted by – and filled with – unexpected intrusions of grace. Acts 9:1-19 reveals the dramatic story of Saul, the persecutor of Christians, being challenged by God’s grace. Saul’s experience turned him into the first Christian missionary. He found strength to trust the truth of God’s love. Grace also came disguised as Ananias, his host-companion.

As we search for truth-pieces in our life stories, we can find grace very hard to accept. How often have you thought, “I don’t deserve her/his love …”? But the truth is she/he loves you. When grace is received as an unconditional gift, you have a hard choice to make: You must choose to accept it or not.

If you can’t accept it, why is it important to you that you don’t accept her grace? What are your inner limitations?

We have a new friend in our retirement community, Mary Jane Nordgren. Her novel, “Exhalation” (2024), is about Nandria, a young Black woman in 1940s Missouri. She speaks of the limitations we place, or have placed, on us.

Nandria wisely speaks of her white mother-in-law: “Mother Minnick is a product of her upbringing. As are we all, until we have experienced enough of the world to grow beyond those limitations.”

Facts often determine what those limitations might be. But truth can go beyond those limitations. And most often does! Look for more truth-pieces than you’ve already settled for.

Like I rediscovered in my simple three-floor photo experiment, facts rarely tell the fuller truth of a situation. And grace? It comes in many disguises, including truth.

The Rev. Paul Graves, a retired United Methodist minister, can be contacted at elderadvocates@gmail.com.